changeColClass: changeColClass()
In jakesherman/jakemisc: A set of misc. functions from Jake Sherman.

Description Usage Arguments Details Examples

Changes the class of columns from one class to another class, ex. change all columns of class factor into columns of class character. Works on both data.frame and data.table classes. You may also specify either a) specific columns to do this conversion on, or alternatively b) specific columns that you do not want conversion performed on.

1 2	changeColClass(data = NULL, startingClass = NULL, finalClass = NULL, onlyConvert = NULL, noConvert = NULL, ref = TRUE)

`data`	a `data.frame` or `data.table`
`startingClass`	the column type you want converted
`finalClass`	the column type you want to convert startingClass into
`onlyConvert`	OPTIONAL - specify a vector of one or more column names as the only columns where the class conversion will take place. You may either have this parameter satified, or the noConvert parameter specified, you may not specify both.
`noConvert`	OPTIONAL - specify a vector of one or more columns names that you do not want any conversion applied to. You may either have this parameter satified, or the noConvert parameter specified, you may not specify both.
`ref`	TRUE (default) or FALSE, if TRUE and data is a data.table, modify the data.table by reference (modifying-in-place), if FALSE, do not modify the data.table by reference, instead treat it like a data.frame (copy on modify).

This function uses seperate methods for data.tables and data.frames. By default, data.tables will be modified by reference. To turn off this behavior, set ref to FALSE.

\code{changeColClass(my_data, "factor", "character")}
\code{changeColClass(my_data, "numeric", "character",
                     onlyConvert = c(my_cols))}
\code{changeColClass(my_data, "numeric", "character",
                     noConvert = "special_col")}